Building a Low-cost Hypersonic Wind Tunnel for visualising hypersonic airflow using Schlieren Imaging for scramjet devices
Modern space research is constantly looking for optimized and enhanced propulsion techniques for in-space flights as well as in-atmosphere flights in various types of atmospheres of planets and satellites of the Solar system. It is obvious that construction and design of propulsion systems and their elements should be validated against the conditions of each specific planet. In addition, spacecraft entering these atmospheres at extremely high velocities experience the influence of extreme temperatures combined with specific composition of each atmosphere in terms of gas properties. In order to asses such conditions I need to have a testing device which can create hypersonic speeds and extreme temperatures to the probe (which in my case will be a model of an engine). Currently there are few such facilities available only to a handful of researchers which slows down the progress in this domain. Since I do not have access to such a complex, I decided to create a device which will allow me to achieve those conditions. In this work I have constructed and tested an act jet device which uses a combination of a convergence-divergence nozzle and an act jet engine. I also created an observation instrument in the form of a Schlieren Imaging setup. This allowed me to perform some testing of my test model for a scramjet engine which I plan to use for a fully-controllable return to Earth vehicle. This device allowed me to test the probe with hypersonic speed and temperatures exceeding 3000 degrees Celcius.